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The Nazi's Painted the White Rose Red | Sophie Scholl · Beheaded

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to Beheaded.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to season three, episode four.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Megan Moore.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm Elizabeth Black.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: No longer a snuffleophagus.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: She sounds great today.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like super clear nasal passages all day.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: So sorry.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: I listened to the last episode.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, wow, I was It wasn't too bad.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: I kept snotting into the microphone.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's some snot we had to wipe off of the microphone for this time.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: The whole time it was like like sniffing.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: I feel great today.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm fine.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't that.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I listened to it too the last episode, and uh, you know, I noticed at the beginning, obviously, when we pointed out your snuffiness, but throughout the episode I did not notice it.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: It is the week of the Ewolog.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm British.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to be British.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm sorry.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you didn't know Megan's British now.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's the week of Christmas.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is the week of Christmas, and it's like such an exciting week.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very busy with work.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe most of your work is winding down.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm busy.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: You're busy too?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Every single customer wants to know why FedEx has not delivered their package.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: And they say like talking to me has nothing to do with it.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, I just why?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Why aren't you like Amazon and can deliver me my things next day?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: For those who don't know, I work in an online retail.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a customer support manager.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the lead customer support manager.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I take the escalations of the escalations of the escalations.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: They're really pissed off.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: And they're just like, this said it was gonna be delivered on Thursday.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it is now Monday, and FedEx is still in transit.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, yes, FedEx says it will be delivered on Tuesday.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to say things like, I understand your frustration, ma'am.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: I say that a lot.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is my line.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: As a consumer myself, I also understand the frustrations you're going through.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good line.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: It makes them know you're human and you also deal with these things.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also an online consumer as we all shop online.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: We've all had we all are oh the everything, like all the shipping.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's a I'm trying to say now, like, this is not an us problem.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is like a universal issue that is happening right now with delays and back orders.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, right now, too.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Manufacturers, yeah.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: The year of COVID, we all know about supply issues.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, deep breath.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's the holidays.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're as we record this, maybe not when you listen, but as we re we record, we're five days from Christmas.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, no, no, I mean, yes, I love Christmas, but I just feel unprepared.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: My parents are visiting, I have to make a menu.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's the first time I've ever hosted Christmas, and I don't even know what you're doing.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm 33 years old.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, I try to be like, yeah, good about making things from scratch, but I think I'm gonna trader Joe's it too.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Trader Joe's it.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: You get their potatoes, you get their like cornered hem, you put their brussels sprouts, you put it all together.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm gonna do that because I I can't.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna make a bagged salmon thing from scratch, and I just can't.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like not in the mental head space.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna trader Joe's it.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great idea.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Do it.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:15
  unknown: Okay.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want for Christmas?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Me and Megan have a good tradition of giving each other old books for Christmas.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: She's looking at me.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: I secured an old book for you.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, last year I didn't hear that about that.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: I got a DVD in May, so I wasn't sure if we were doing it.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so last year was a rough year.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: We were going through a lot of life changes in the year, and we didn't really have time for a formal gift exchange, especially because we hang out all the time.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get you.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we'll get each other.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about it.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: I got you.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, but you got me like a modern day Barnes and Noble book.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I thought we were doing.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, you didn't.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we will always do an old novel of sorts.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: It was an old novel in a modern day print.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: That works.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, I loved Megan's gift, and I still have it and I enjoy it, and it's part of my decor.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was like a supernatural story, it's one of those Barnes and Noble illuminated textbooks, beautiful.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I meant to get Megan an old book too, and like a couple months went by and I was like, fuck it.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like Megan, I you love the movie Rebecca.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting you the 1940, like Alfred Hitchcock version of Rebecca that's on Blu-ray, and we watched it.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: We had a whole, I think we talked about it.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you're giving me shit about not giving it.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, we we both we both we both gave each other a gift, and that's what's important last year.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I intend to get you a gift.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: I got I told you about one earlier this afternoon.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: I already forgot it.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of your gift, something I stole from the office.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: From our 1920s Art Depot room.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's part of the gift, but then there's another part of the gift.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, I'm gonna get you a gift, but it's a book old book related.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now we sound stupid because we're just dancing around the gift ideas we had for each other.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm my mind is like going a mile a minute trying to figure out what I'm gonna do in the next five days.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's fine.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm also gonna be gone on Christmas, so it's I'll be gone on the 23rd, so we'll do like a New Year's.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll do like when we get back into town and we're ready to podcast again, we'll do a gift exchange.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we'll do a live recording of the gift exchange.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh now, I'm so nervous.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Literally thought we were doing nothing.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: So this is this is fine.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: This is cool.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna, no, but that's why we do rules around birthdays and holiday because we don't- Oh as a book.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: We don't, yeah, we don't want it to be like high pressure, like, oh my gosh, I gosh, I got you the best gift ever.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, we've known each other a few years and we know what we like, so we don't try to make it like this out gifting each other thing.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: We make it like on our birthdays, we get coffee table books for each other.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And on Christmas, we give old novels, like preferably from an old secondhand store, to each other.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Don't look at me like that's new.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's a thing we discussed.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: It is, but have we ever done it?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um who is our victim today?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking about Christmas, and naturally you thought about Nazis.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Duh.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I was thinking about Nazi executions.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: I tend to think about that during the holidays.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I'm a solid 50.0% Jewish.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: So Nazi things kind of relate to me.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that sounds terrible.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: My mom, who's not the Jew side of my family, she's the Catholic side of your family.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: She loves like World War II history, Jewish history, and Nazis.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Not loves Nazis, but you know, like she doesn't love the Nazis.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's very intriguing and sad.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: The history of it.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: So she sends me like stacks of books to read, and they're always like historical fiction, and I have a pile that I've been kind of going through, and I have to like mix it up because they're so darn sad.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I have to like read one and then read something else.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then read an Elizabeth the First book, and then go back to Nazi book.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I go back to Anne Boleyn and then I'll read a Nazi book, and then I'll read Mary Queen of Scott, and then I read a Nazi book, and I checked this out weeks ago for a bit of light reading.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's all light reading.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the last one I read, I thought it was completely historical fiction.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Then I read the afterward and find out no, this was these were real people, and like my jaw drops.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, and I immediately texted Elizabeth and I said, I've got a story for us.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and that's the story of tonight.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good one.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Sophie Scholl.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sophie Scholl.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Sophie and Hans Scholl, we can include her brother into it, but we are feminists, so we like Sophie.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sophie's under Sophie.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we talk about too many men, aka almost no men on this podcast.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Although season two was primarily women, but we still like the female, the female protagonist on this podcast.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I will say in the last episode, we talked about really loving like the martyrs and yeah, yeah.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: In our last episode, someone who like totally deserved it.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: He was a serial killer.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Got everything he got.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And Sophie, we're gonna go back to the martyr.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Back to the martyr.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And someone who was really just an amazing human and didn't deserve what she got.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Not at all.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so young by the time she was executed.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Very sad.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And just to give a quick synopsis of who she was before we get into her whole story, um, she was a German student and she was an anti-Nazi political activist.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she was remember, she was a member of the nonviolent resistance group called the White Rose Group.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: Love it.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Which we'll get into.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but again, very young, very idealistic.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of us can kind of relate to her in our early years of maybe being, you know, out of high school, like young adolescent, like young in college type of thing of our very uh world-renowned idealistic views.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll go into all of that.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: But Sophie Scholl um was born Sophia Magden Magdalena Scholl, I believe that's how you say.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um her mother's name was surprised, Magdalena.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, her father was Robert Scholl, who was a liberal politician um and a Nazi critic in southern Germany.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he was actually the mayor of um our main character Sophie's hometown called, and I'm gonna I again apologize if we butcher the German names as we usually do, but Forenberg and Koscher.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, does that sound correct correct?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a town in southern Italy.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: We can call it Forenberg for short.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it was in the Free People States of Wodenberg in southern Germany.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh Robert and Magdalena, they had six children all together.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: We looked it up.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna confuse you with the number of children this episode.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sophie's the fourth of six.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, Sophie was fourth of six.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, they were raised in a big Lutheran family, again, in the south of Germany.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and by 1930, so at this point she is nine years old, Miss Sophie, and they moved to Ludwigsburg.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And two years later, 1932, they moved to a town called Uhum.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, again, another town in southern Germany.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: So 1932, she began secondary school.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and this is the point where she uh joins what some some things it's called the some things it's called the League of German Girls.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh shit.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's German.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: I just slipped into a German accent there in case you didn't notice.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the League of German Girls is kind of similar to what people know as like the Hitler Youth Program with boys.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: So Hans, her brother, did join the her the Hitler Youth program.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And these were both programs where the girls were essentially conditioned to be future housewives, like future wives of leaders who were going to be in the military, who were going to be part of the Nazi uh army.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And Hans, again, Hitler Youth program is pretty self-explanatory, but you essentially learn how to be a Nazi from a young age.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so they were both very good kind of students, I guess you should say, in these groups.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Both of them rose to leadership positions, were very well known in their groups, were very smart, quick to rise in their programs.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: But both of them were already at this time pretty disillusioned with the ideas of the Nazi party.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Even though they were a part of them, they knew, hey, listen, this is this is weird, right?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is weird to be a part of these groups where you're being told this is how to be the perfect housewife.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this is how the this is how to be the perfect military man kind of thing.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Barf.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Barf.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: A little gross.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in a sorority.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Zing.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, but it's like it's one of those things where it's like when they're in it, they they know that something isn't quite right.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so aside from those two programs, Sophie was very talented in painting, drawing.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: She had a huge love of reading, um, especially any kind of reading that involved philosophy or theology.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So by 1940, um, she graduated from secondary school.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: She almost didn't graduate at this point because by 1940, after the eight years that she'd really been a part of this German girls' group and again her disillusionment, she became very dismissive of Nazi ideas.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: She disliked participating at that point.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: So even though she was smart enough to rise in the ranks of this program, she really didn't understand the doctrine of this program.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't agree with the doctrine, and neither did Hans, her brother.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: They both kind of grew up in this very liberal household with free thinking and free ideas, and now that they're in this militant kind of organization, they were like, I'm sorry, what?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they were they they got to be, you know, older at that point and have a certain mind for thinking for themselves.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: So they became very distant to the ideas that started infiltrating their Nazi organizations, and at this point, too, the ideas that infiltrated their schools, their own schools that they were in, really became infiltrated with Nazi doctrine.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So they took a step back and said, this is not really who we want to become.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: So they didn't quite vocalize it to each other or outwardly yet, but they knew something was wrong.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: So right after she graduated from secondary school, Sophie became a kindergarten teacher, which is funny.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was also a kindergarten teacher.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: We we've all been through that phase, I suppose.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but she became a kindergarten teacher because she thought uh that she could escape the National Labor Service, which was basically the prerequisite to going to university.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: So she said, if I become a kindergarten teacher, I can get around this and eventually I can qualify for university, which ended up to be a wrong notion.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was a wrong idea.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: She did have to eventually um join the National Labor Service in some capacity.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: So in 1941, she actually had to become a nursery teacher in Bloomberg, which is a very militant type position, very regimented.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's when she again got her prerequisite for university.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: But during that time, she understood that she had to become kind of a passive resistant to this Nazi way.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, everything at that time was overtaken by the Nazi way of thinking, and so she learned a passive way to be resistant to this movement.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: So she becomes a kindergarten teacher, so slow, like slowly merges into her nursery teacher role, and becomes a passive resistant until she can qualify for university.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: So by May 1942, she finally enrolls in the University of Munich, and there she becomes a biology student, a philosophy student.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, her brother Hans is already there studying medicine, and that's when she really understands her ideas a little bit more and understands a little bit more of who she wants to be.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: I do want to say her father in 1942 was also imprisoned for making a critical remark about Hitler while at work.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: The Fuhrer.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: He said something along the lines of calling Hitler the scourge of God.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: So you can see the the bloodline that she's in and her upbringing, and now she's in school with Hans, and they clearly both have a father who was a very liberal leader and very he was a politician who's very liberal and he was very anti-Nazi.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it's already in their genes and it's in their blood, and they're growing up with this.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: But she's now at the university with her older brother Hans.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: And Hans is is studying medicine.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: However, he does switch his degree from medicine to religion, philosophy, and the arts.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And like I don't know about you, but that's a pretty drastic switch to go from being a doctor to being a philosopher.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And an artist.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Unless you're in the days of like, you know, the cosmic crisp guy.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: They have a pretty cool group of people though.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I say cool, like honestly, if I were living in the 1940s at the at the University of Munich, these seem like the cool kids.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: They were very much into writing, philosophy, going to plays.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: They would go on skiing trips and hiking trips, but then have these lectures and join with other um uh professors and talk about theology and religion and just very artistic group of people, but very cool.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And Sophie started meeting a lot of people through this, and she started meeting a lot of different artists and philosophers and writers and authors.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the main group of people who were Hans's friends was Alexander Schmroll, Willie Graf, Gergy Whiten.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I'm saying these names right.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds about right.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: These are all of Hans' friends.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they were all passive resistance towards the Nazis.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: They started writing these pamphlets, very outspoken, very illegal, shall we say.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Illegal is a good word.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: But they started writing and publishing these leaflets and pamphlets, just anti-Nazism.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the purpose of these pamphlets was telling the German people, you are asleep.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Look at what's going on around you.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Wake up, look at what's happening.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: We can say no.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: We can rise against how do you believe these Nazis?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: How are you against all of this racism?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: And let's say no.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they outlined a lot of the atrocities of Nazism.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: They were the first ones to say, hey, do you know how many Jewish people we've exterminated?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know how many war crimes we've we've inflicted on other people?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and they put out the facts, you know, and and these weren't just ignorant people speaking, you know, in this Munich university.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they at some point were on the battle lines on the Eastern Front as medics, so they saw these things firsthand and they were saying, guys, like, wake up.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what are you doing, Germany?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, look at all these things that are right in front of your face.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, don't just fall for the propaganda and whatever Hitler's feeding you.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, look what's around you.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: They became known as the White Rose.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Very cool name.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: I love that name.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of very War of Roses kind of thing.
• 18:31
  unknown: Love it.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: 1942, they've written now four leaflets that they've written and distributed not throughout only their school at the University of Munich, but throughout Germany.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sophie started to pick up that her brother Hans was a part of this very secret, very illegal group amongst the university.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Which I love too because I love that she didn't just follow whatever her brother did.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like she was just by his side the whole time and was like, oh, you don't agree with Nazism, me neither.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you believe in this, so do I.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was like they both had very independent ways of thinking that arrived at the same point.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Where, you know, to the point where she got a leaflet and was like, wow, this is really intriguing.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is it?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea her brother wrote it or was part of writing, right?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then through the leaflet, traced it back to her brother that she ultimately agreed with.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Which it was cooler than just following with whatever you're being fed from your older siblings.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and she she finally realized that her brother is helping to write these leaflets.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh at the same time, this is about 1942.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: She she does have a boyfriend.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh, Sophie.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Very cool girl.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Get a girl.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um Fritz Hartingall.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I would go for a Fritz Hartingall.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: He was Sophie's boyfriend.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he was deployed to the Eastern Front May 1942.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um her brother was also a medic over there at some point.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: So they're all, again, involved in World War II at this point.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Mostly on the Eastern Front.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: And her and Fritz are exchanging letters.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Funny enough, these letters eventually become like a point of defense in her very like lack of like defense in her trial, which we'll get to.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: But they do use these letters as correspondence between her and her boyfriend.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And her boyfriend has reported about these German war crimes that he's seeing as a German.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: He's saying, Whoa, Sophie, you will not believe what I'm seeing.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: They are killing prisoner of wars at gunshot over pits.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like mass graves kind of thing.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they would have the mass graves and make them all stand up, and this is very dark, but it's what happened, and it's very sad.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there were mass killings of the obviously the Jews, the prisoner of wars, and he was just reporting all these back to her in letters, and she was flabbergasted over it.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and a lot of their letters were about theology, and they actually got to very deep matter.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: She discussed philosophy and theology and religion to him and trying to find reason, I think, behind like, okay, how is our country doing this?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: And where do we stand and where our beliefs and all of these things are things you do not want to be corresponding over borderlines?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, these days it's like the equivalent of sending an email that's super incriminating, right?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can't do it.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the White Rose is has formed, and that again consists of her brother Hans, Alexander, Willie Graf, Christoph Probst is another main character.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: In 1942, Sophie officially became a part of the White Rose.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Her reasoning with kind of becoming part of the club is because she's a woman, she's the first woman to join it.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, whoa, when the SS and the Gestapo want to stop you, just do random checks, they're less likely to stop a woman who looks very innocent.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: And at this point, she's about 20, 21 years old.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the gestapo, just so you know, is the Nazi secret police who are.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Infiltrated the country at this time.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: She said, You need a woman in your club so that I can be more inconspicuous and help distribute your pamphlets.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the pamphlets were being distributed.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: They had up to five successful pamphlets distributed that were very straightforward about, like we said, anti-Nazism and stand-up problems.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you asleep?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And they would travel across Europe and drop these pamphlets around secretly just for people to find them and read them and hope that they get into the hands of enough people to rise a resistance against what was happening.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so February 18th, 1943.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is when they have this big plan, Hans and Sophie, to print a whole suitcase full of leaflets.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: I believe this was their uh fifth leaflet in circulation.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: There are six.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, six, thank you.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it was their sixth one.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: They already had five distributed at this point.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: So their sixth leaflet, they said, okay, here's what we're gonna do.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is very reminiscent of Mean Girls.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't seen it yet, um, reference for Gene and George.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: But what they do is they go and they just place a bunch of stacks of these leaflets around the corridors in the university.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: So they put all of them, you know, in areas where people coming out of lectures will see them and take them and, you know, hopefully read them.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then Sophie takes it an extra mile and she says, you know what, we've got all these extras.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: We've already dropped all these stacks and all these corridors.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna go to the top floor and just go ahead and throw them off of the ledge and hope they all fall down the atrium.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, again, if you haven't seen Mean Girls, Regina George style, she just kind of throws them all over the school and is like, yo, read all my leaflets we just published.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's a very liberating moment for her and Hans.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: They go, they distribute all these leaflets, but at the same time, one of the janitors of the school sees this happen.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: And in this day and age of Nazi Germany, you never know who's on what side, you never know who's out for themselves or who's out to be a spy.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: So this janitor, of course, his name's Jakob Schmidt, he is a self-avowed Nazi.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Even though he's just a janitor for the school, he sees this happen.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: He sees her throw all these pamphlets over this uh this ledge that goes into the main atrium of the school, and he says immediately, hey, she's a troublemaker.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: We found one of the distributors of these pamphlets that have been going around, and he immediately turns her into the Gestapo, which again is the Nazi Secret Police.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: So the Nazi Secret Police, they they are so excited about Jacob's discovery.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Jacob, um, he literally gets an award and a promotion because he turned her in.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so at this point, they have her in custody, and they quickly also trace this back to Hans.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: So they have now Hans and Sophie in custody.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: And what's worse is that Hans already has the draft of the seventh leaflet on him.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: So not only was he just caught distributing all these six leaflets, but he's got the seventh one on him in his jacket.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they they said that he even tried to like tear it apart, he tried to swallow it, he tried to get rid of it in a certain amount of ways, and they eventually just, you know, took it all up and they said, nope, all of this matches what you have in your apartment.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: We know that you're the person that's been drafting all of these, and so they have solid evidence against Hans.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: So at this point, we have this guy, Robert Moore, who's the main interrogator.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's the one that kind of again questions Hans and Sophie.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: And originally he thought Hans was more the instigator, and Sophie was rather innocent.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: But as soon as Hans came around to confessing and said, Yes, I did write these, these are my thoughts, this is what I think.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sophie did the same.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sophie wasn't one to really back down from a challenge, and she wanted to protect the rest of the members of the White Rose.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: So she wasn't about to say, Oh my gosh, no, I'm just young and innocent and all of this, and these people are all the ones responsible.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: She stood up and said, No, these are my thoughts.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is my brother.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: I stand with him, these are our ideas.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: No one else is responsible for these two things, you know, or these six things, I guess, at this point, but me and Hans.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: So they both confessed to writing all of the pamphlets.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hero.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hero! Protected all the other members that were a part of it, even though she was probably one of the newest members and the only female members.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's so hard to do.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, imagine being interrogated by the Nazis overnight like that.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what they're capable of at this point, too.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: She's more than well aware of what her fate is, I think.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: They were not fooling around.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: And there was the chance that maybe she could get off with just going to a a work camp, a concentration camp, basically.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because everyone just gets off from a condition.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which of course, like little does she know that's just as much of a death sentence as an actual execution.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's that that was the alternative, is or you know, being held in prison forever.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: So by February 22nd, 1943, um, she is taken to the people's court with her brother.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so they are again at this point on trial.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: And what's interesting is Sophie's dad at this point tries to go and speak, you know, on their behalf in the trial, and he's completely banned.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, apparently he and the mother kind of went to speak on their children's behalf and they were not allowed in the court.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: So Sophie's only quote from this whole trial because they weren't really allowed a whole lot of defense or testimony.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what she said though, what in court was somebody, after all, has to make a start.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: What we wrote and said is also believed by many others.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: They just don't dare express themselves as we did.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: So this was a very famous thing that she said while she was on trial.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: And again, you know, not not all the people were in her corner, only or her, you know, her parents weren't even allowed.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so at this point, they now have Hans, they have Sophie, and they even pulled their friend uh Christoph.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Christoph.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: I keep I wrote his name as Christian.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Christoph probed.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so they have them, and during the course of one day, one day on February 22nd, they say, You're condemned to death, the three of you.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, not a lot goes into this.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Again, not a lot of trial or deliberation or whatever.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: They already have an executioner lined up whose name is Johan Ricard, and they say, Hey, 5 p.m.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: today, you're all executed by guillotine.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: 5 p.m.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's basically like we've heard a lot of execution stories, even from you know, Socrates.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like that they they allow days, not weeks, if months.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of them do.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of deliberations.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Marie Antoinette, where she waited in prison for what, 10 months or so?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's very common for prisoners to be in prison for a lot of months before any kind of execution is.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe two years.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is the same.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Less than five hours, I would say.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's gross.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's like she was in prison for four days, like she was arrested on the 18th, and by the 22nd, when they had the trial, they decided the sentence and wanted to carry it out.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: I actually looked up what days it was.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like of the week.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: The 18th was a Thursday in 1943.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: They were interrogated through Friday.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was the weekend, no one was working, so they were just held in prison.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Monday morning is when they started the trial.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: By Monday at 5 p.m., they were executed.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Stupid.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thursday.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: That was a 48-hour business business rule right there.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even get a task done in that time at my work these days.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: And in this time, they decide the fate of three people.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: I thought this part was like pretty heavy.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: So as Elizabeth mentioned, her parents did try to go into the courthouse and defend for their children.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: And they were not allowed.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: However, they were allowed to talk to their children before their execution after they were already sentenced to death.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um they were escorted back.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: The guards permitted Hans and Sophie to have one last word with their parents.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: And this is something that came from um Hans got to speak with her parents first, and this is like really sweet.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: But her mom tried to give him candy and he said no.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: And they wouldn't let Sophie and Hans in together to speak to their parents together.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: But Hans leaves and Sophie comes in.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: And um I guess her mother offered again the candy that she gave to Hans, and Hans declined it.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Sophie's response was gladly, after all, I haven't had any lunch.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Me.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, uh, I'm sorry, you have candy?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's so sad.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is it dark chocolate Reese's?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Her mother says, to think you'll never be coming through the door again.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh god.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: So they they know that they're about to be beheaded.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh Lord.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is 1943.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is our our grandparents were in this.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just totally, yeah.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, to think about the other 1940s executions that we've had on this podcast, it's usually in a violent wave by firing squad.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's very rarely these like sweet moments.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: This one really hit us.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: This one was a little tough to get through.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Sophie says, We took everything upon ourselves.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: We did what what we did will cause waves.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: And her mother says, Remember Jesus.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they have their last goodbyes, her and her parents, and they hug each other, and the guard takes her back to her her cell.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: And um, Sophie's been very composed all along.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: But she starts weeping naturally because she's a human.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: She tells the guard, I have just said goodbye to my parents.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: You understand.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Johan, the executioner, he started being an executioner again from his father.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was like a lineage of executioners, which is what we've talked about before, which once you're in the execution business in your family, it just kind of goes from father to son.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it's probably lucrative.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody wants to have that job.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: So they pay you to think.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: I have some info on his pay.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: You would think that.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: He started in April 1924, um, and he was the executioner in Bavaria.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: For each execution, he was paid 150 gold marks plus 10 marks for daily expenses, and then he was given a third class train ticket.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: I do that.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't actually have the comparison of 150 gold marks to what it would be in either USD or or pounds.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna guesstimate 500 USD.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: It might be decent, but the thing was he was paid per execution, which which was a very archaic practice.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: Think about like Anne Blenn's executioner, they were paid per execution.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Same as him.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: 1924 to 1928 was a tough time for him.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: He only executed 23 people.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, shame.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: In the prison system.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: 1928, Aloney only executed one person.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, so that's kind of rough.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like a year yearly salary.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Your yearly salary salary is 500 bucks.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: So he had he fell in very rough times because he couldn't execute an okay.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, I'm sorry, we're all the criminals here.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Spring 1931, he goes to Munich.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: 1933, when things start picking up a little bit, he signs a contract with Munich and he's going to receive a flexed income and he's going to be paid monthly at this point.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, like a set salary, because we are now in World War II and have him on retainer.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: He has some more work to do.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so they figure instead of being paid per person, he will be paid on a monthly basis.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: He gets a salary.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: 1933, his annual income raises to 3,720 Greek max.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, we keep means diff differing the currency.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I had like a understanding.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: What I what I got from this though was he started becoming pretty wealthy.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: And in 1937, he officially joined the Nazi Party.
• 34:46
  unknown: Wow.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: He's a full-on Nazi executioner making pretty good money from the Nazis.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say, not probably because of ideological choice, probably because of uh, you know, that's where the money is.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's where the money is, and he has a stable income at this point.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Damn.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: He was the executioner responsible for Munich, Dresden, Stuttgart, and Weimar.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Weinmar, yes.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he was very invested in his practice because he his goal was to um, I mean, again, he's not being paid per execution, but paid monthly.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: His personal goal was to make the execution process process efficient.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and quite make yes, he made improvements to what he said, quote unquote, would re reduce stress from the convicts.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's kind of nice, right?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: He thought the quicker we can do it, get him in, get him out.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: But he sped up the process of the guillotine.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: So compare this to your modern day job of like customer service escalation calls.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, I just want to get them on and off my phones in an efficient manner.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: Reduce your age, your average handle time.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Your average handle time goes down, which is all he was trying to do in this era.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: He made changes such as instead of actually tying the convict down, he would have his assistants hold them down.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: Smart.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: He replaced a flipping board.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: Flipping board.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: He re He replaced a fixed bench with a flipping board.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh god.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: Which is how it kind of like stood up straight.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: They went down on it, then they put him down, and people kind of pushed them down on it.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like a plank that you lay belly flat on.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: Or you like stand up against and they push you down.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't like an ironing board and they just flip you down.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: So the the the victim, the person, doesn't have to like lay physically down on it.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: You just kind of stand up, they push you up against it, and then they flip you down.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Which makes sense because if you're doing it on your own like will, you're slower because it's your death.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if people push you down, it's faster.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, it's called a tipping board.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yes.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he also took off three to four seconds by not blindfolding the person, but just having his assistants cover their eyes.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: My god.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: So all this work goes on the assistants.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is called shadow work, my friends.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: It means you, as the person enduring the thing, doesn't have to, or you have to kind of do more because now you don't have the luxuries of these old time uh just don't get your hands in the way.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you just kind of deal with substantial work.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh god.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: You push them down, you put them on the tipping board, cover their eyes.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: Cover their eyes.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: Why why does that help?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: You still know this gun.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Shit.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: I guess.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: They don't look at the heads already in the I was gonna say, are there already heads in this vessel that you're about to be tossed into?
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: There might be.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, might.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: We'll get back to Alex, Hans, and Christoph in a minute.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm terrible.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Who's Alex?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sophie Hansen.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Alex Drew.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: All the friends all together, um Johan executed in his career.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: 2,951 people.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's a fuck ton.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: 250 of them were women.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, I'm sorry.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: Only 29 2,951 were by guillotine, 59 additionally, were by hangings.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: So he was a hangman and a guillotine artist.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: He was an executioner.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: He did all of the above.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: And he made off pretty wealthy, it sounds.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: He said that he had never seen anyone die as bravely as Sophie Scholl.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: And he's an expert.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: Out of almost, we can round that up to 3,000 people.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Are you shitting me?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not shitting you.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: He said she was the bravest of everyone.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, before we get back to their executions, really quickly, because there's some more about his history.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he was eventually arrested by the US Army by being a member of the Nazis.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: And until 1946, he helped the US Army execute 156 Nazis by hangings.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: So he was basically working for the US while also being a prisoner of the US.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: So now instead of him being like hired for his his ideology, he's just a blood money guy, you know?
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: He's also ironically still getting paid by the Germans, even though he's being arrested and hanging the Nazis.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: My brain's gonna explode.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: He just hangs everybody.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: He then got rearrested again, like after he thought he did his sentence, they re-arrested him.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: He went to a labor camp again in 1947.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like the U.S.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: labor camp.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: He was sentenced to two and a half years, it got reduced to a year and a half.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: He got out, he died peacefully at the age of 78 years old.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: As most executioners do, just nicely in their beds.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: He was said to be a very lonely person.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: I imagine.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: His own son committed suicide because he like couldn't handle the upbringing of his family of being on the line of Nazi execution.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about this guillotine.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: His father, like changed the subject.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: Very much made proficient.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: This probably is not a nicer subject than his deaths, but uh Megan told me before we started this episode, she's like, oh, this was really great.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: He converted the wooden guillotine into a metal guillotine.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that nice?
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: Marie Antoinette wooden guillotine.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is like archaic.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a metal steel one, and they still have.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we like that better, like it's more comfortable to hug the cold metal in front of you.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: That was just more reliable, I think.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: I guess easier to clean.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: Less rickety.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm gonna clean a wood guillotine versus a metal guillotine, I'd choose the metal one any day so I could just with some Clorox wipes like fast.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's not a there's not a wooden there's not a woven basket, but there's like a metal bin.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's just like a funnel.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like a metal funnel, right?
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: That like kind of feeds the heads into a bin, yeah.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ugh.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: Better than just the basket in front of you.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um this one got to us.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: I know this one got to us.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a good one.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: We've been talking about a lot of executions.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, this is one of the more modern ones, and maybe with the photographs, it just seems more real.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: This feels very real.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh good.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um Merry Christmas.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: They believe they actually found the guillotine that Johan used on Sophie, Hans, and Christoph.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and it is located in the the Museum of Munich.
• 41:49
  unknown: Wow.
• 41:50
  unknown: Ugh.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: Gotta go there.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you YouTube, like Sophie Scholl guillotine, you can find some documentaries of some very old historians showing off the guillotine that was used.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think they cleaned the guillotine in between her execution and Hans's guest.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they had time to.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because, oh, talk about the seconds.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: No, you talked about the seconds.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't have it on my notes.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: You do.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: I have the seconds.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: But they said between the time that she entered the execution room and was executed was I believe 48 seconds.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: The time from cell to death was 48 seconds.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're right.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: Wild.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: The time from being placed into the guillotine to her being put onto it to the blade falling was a solid six seconds.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: How do you even measure that?
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, let's count it.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: Ready?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: One, two, three, four.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: Six.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: Bad short amount of time.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: To be placed on a metal tipping board, you called it.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: Tipping board.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: To the blade going down and severing your neck.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: Six seconds, are you fucking kidding me?
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, from cell to death, less than a minute.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: 48 seconds.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's wild.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, from sentence to death, less than five hours.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: How did she even get her last words out?
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to read them?
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yes.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think she read these before they led her from the cell.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: In the cell, because her cellmate was the one that recorded it.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't have time by the time they took her out.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: But these are her last words.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: So Sophie's last words were How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause?
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days?
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: How many young, promising lives?
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted?
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: Among the student body there were certainly be a revolt.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: First of the three to be beheaded.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: Before they had to be beheaded and they're still in their cell, they were allowed to share a cigarette together.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's nice.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: Her, her brother Hans, and Christoph, their friend.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: So they pass around a cigarette.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: She says her last words.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: They escort her out.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: And within 48 seconds, she's she's gone.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Christoph was next, and then Hans was the last of the three.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: And he had some he screamed out some words.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: In that, like, what do you call it, 50 seconds from them putting him down as they as they put him on the thing and they they put they put the guillotine down, he yells out, Long live freedom.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Very William Wallace.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like their parents must have been proud, but so sad.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: Two of their six kids were just guillotined.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so young for such a good cause.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, Sophie and Hans were delivered their last rites.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um Christoph was asked to be baptized right before he died, too.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sweet boy.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: So they were they were all very religious in nature and like again looking just for a peaceful means of protesting to what they saw around them.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't looking for a fight, they weren't looking for uh again, like you know, crazy, just like head-to-head rivalry.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: They were just looking to like, hey, all of us need to wake up and stand up against this.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: And because that they were beheaded at such a young age.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: Christoph was married, his wife just had their third child, and she was currently in the hospital, and oh my god, she didn't go and visit him.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's terrible.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: So he had no one come and visit him in that like five hours he was in there.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Chris.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: Or over the weekend, I guess.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um later they did arrest and execute a few more of the White Rose.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Alex Schmorrell, who was only 25, Willie Graf was also 25, and then Kurt Huber, who was their professor at age 49.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: Jeez.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they were all students at the University of Hamburg were either executed or sent to a concentrate concentration camp.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, casual.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm sure some of them made it out.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: Jeez.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Sophie's boyfriend Fritz did make it through World War II, came back.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, Sophie was no longer there, but he married her younger sister or older sister.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think older sister.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: Older sister Elizabeth.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's kind of nice.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, there you go.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: Very uh Catherine Aragon of her of him.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this is my favorite part.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: So this sixth pamphlet, which was the one that they redistributed right before the dinner caught them, which made them go to prison and executed.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: The sixth pamphlet was smuggled out of Germany and got into the hands of some of the Brits in the UK.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: The Allies, yeah, and it got into the hands of the Allied forces.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: The Allied forces made millions of copies of it.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: They retitled it The Manifesto of the Students of Munich.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, bravo.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: They dropped it from airplanes over Germany.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: So all the Germans walked down.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's millions of copies of Sophie and Hans's pamphlet.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: You were Gina George that shit.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I wanna cry.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that's good.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: They shared their final words throughout all of Germany and that real life.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: Someone like Megan who enjoys a good story to Jews story.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is this is it.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, but it's true though, I mean a lot.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: No, but I love that that their their final pamphlet was distributed, it was published.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, it wasn't in vain, you know, and even to this day in 2003, they made a bust, like a a replica of Sophie that stands right on the grounds near the University of Munich that basically tells everyone about her sacrifice and how much she gave to the cause.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so she was certainly a wave, as she said.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like it w it was a tidal wave of just, hey, these are the atrocities that are happened.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: We can't just all be this like slumbering Germany that's willing to accept these war crimes.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is not okay.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and a lot of that just really solidified the Allies' belief in what they were doing, and belief in again making sure World War II was won by the Allies.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: So this was this was powerful, even though their actual lives were short, you know, and what they did in terms of campaigning might have seemed small in comparison to a lot of these armies.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was very powerful.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: And she was only 21 years old.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: 21.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds me very much of our Zoya episode.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I got some flashbacks on it.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and Joan of Arc.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: I feel where you were at 21, though.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, I don't want to think you're on kind of a sorority party.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um in Vegas.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get this girl.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: A little more adult pamphlets, and it's just it's a really good story.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you are interested in Sophie Scholl, the book that inspired me is called The Traitor by VS Alexander.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: It looks very good.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's a uh historical fiction, so Sophie's not the main character, it's told through someone else's story, but she um her, Hans, Christoph, Willie, they're all in it, and they kind of slip through as um the not protagonist, but like the supportive characters.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right, supported characters.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't realize until the end, like, oh my god, wait, what happened with them?
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's a complete afterward and like the story of Sophie.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: I love when like whenever I read a historical fiction book and I find out that either the central character or many of the characters were part of real real characters.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're real people.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that while I was reading it.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was just okay, it's another one of my mom's like concentration camp books.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um it says a novel inspired by the daring true story of the white rose.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I highly recommend.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: I read it very quickly because I was very engrossed in it.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: Very into it.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I love gosh.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: So um, Elizabeth, on that very enlightening note.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: Any final words?
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: Happy Christmas to our European listeners.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: Merry Christmas to our American listeners, and we will see you all in the new year.