Anti Fascists

"Turn where you will, everywhere, the man and the woman ever confronting each other, the man who loves a hundred times, the woman who has the power to love so much and to forget so much. I went on my way again. I came and went in the midst of the naked truth. I am not a man of peculiar and exceptional traits. I recognise myself in everybody. I have the same desires, the same longings as the ordinary human being. Like everybody else I am a copy of the truth spelled out in the Room, which is, "I am alone and I want what I have not and what I shall never have." It is by this need that people live, and by this need that people die."

"You can't really measure the effect of this kind of resistance in whether or not X number of bridges were blown up or a regime fell... The White Rose really has a more symbolic value, but that's a very important value."

"One of the greatest persons of the 20th Century is largely unknown in this country. We are speaking of Sophie Scholl, a German student who was executed by the Nazis in 1943 for her role as a member of The White Rose, a resistance group which bravely stood up to the inhumanity of the totalitarian regime through the writing and covert distribution of leaflets. … In a poll of Germans conducted in 2003, she was named the fourth greatest woman in that nation's history and other polls have chosen her the greatest German woman of the 20th Century. Some 200 schools in Germany are named in honor of Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans, who also was executed on that fateful day."

"Of course, the terrible things I heard from the Nuremberg Trials, about the six million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply. But I wasn't able to see the connection with my own past. I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out."

"Sophie Scholl's inspirational and life-affirming story is not just another story about the past. It is a story of vital importance in the present and about the future. It is a story of bravery, of personal conscience and of freedom of opinion. It is really a story of today, about you and me. We must never forget she was just 21 years old when she was killed by the Nazis, but she possessed a life-affirming personality no dictatorship could ever silence."

"Die Sonne scheint noch."

"The tolerant and open atmosphere of their childhood had enabled them to see through Hitler's platitudes at the Nuremberg Rally, when the brother and sister were members of Nazi youth organizations. Nearly all their peers were completely won over by the Führer, whereas Hans and Sophie had other, higher expectations of human nature, not shared by their comrades, against which they could measure Hitler."

"It is possibly the most spectacular moment of resistance that I can think of in the 20th Century... The fact that five little kids, in the mouth of the wolf, where it really counted, had the tremendous courage to do what they did, is spectacular to me. I know that the world is better for them having been there, but I don't know why."

"The real damage is done by those millions who want to "survive." The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves — or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn."

"Such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives... What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted. Among the student body there will certainly be a revolt."

"Stand up for what you believe in even if you are standing alone."

"I've been thinking of a story from the Old Testament: Moses stood all day and all night with outstretched arms, praying to God for victory. And whenever he let down his arms, the enemy prevailed over the children of Israel. Are there still people today who never weary of directing all their thinking and all their energy, single-heartedly, to one cause?"

"I know that life is a doorway to eternity, and yet my heart so often gets lost in petty anxieties. It forgets the great way home that lies before it. Unprepared, given over to childish trivialities, it could be taken by surprise when the great hour comes and find that, for the sake of piffling pleasures, the one great joy has been missed. I am aware of this, but my heart is not. It seems unteachable; it continues its dreaming … always wavering between joy and depression."

"Isn't it bewildering … that everything is so beautiful, despite all the horrors that exist? Lately I've noticed something grand and mysterious peering into my sheer joy in all that is lovely — the sense of a Creator whom innocent creation worships with its beauty. Only man can be hateful or ugly, because he possesses a free will to cut himself off from the chorus of praise. It often seems that he will succeed in drowning out this chorus with his cannon thunder, curses, and blasphemy. But it has become clear to me this spring that he cannot. And so I must try to throw myself on the side of the victor."

"Just because so many things are in conflict does not mean that we ourselves should be divided. Yet time and time again one hears it said that since we have been put into a conflicting world, we have to adapt to it. Oddly, this completely unchristian idea is most often espoused by so-called Christians, of all people. How can we expect a righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone who will give himself up undividedly to a righteous cause?"

"I am, now as before, of the opinion that I did the best that I could do for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct and will bear the consequences that result from my conduct."

"Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did."

"The only remedy for a barren heart is prayer, however poor and inadequate. As I did that night at Blumberg, I'll keep on repeating it for us both: We must pray, and pray for each other, and if you were here, I'd fold hands with you, because we're poor, weak, sinful children. Oh, Fritz, if I can't write anything else just now, it's only because there's a terrible absurdity about a drowning man who, instead of calling for help, launches into a scientific, philosophical, or theological dissertation while the sinister tentacles of the creatures on the seabed are encircling his arms and legs, and the waves are breaking over him. It's only because I'm filled with fear, that and nothing else, and feel an undivided yearning for him who can relieve me of it."

"I pity people who can't find laughter or at least some bit of amusement in the little doings of the day. I believe I could find something ridiculous even in the saddest moment, if necessary. It has nothing to do with being superficial. It's a matter of joy in life."

"I'm still so remote from God that I don't even sense his presence when I pray. Sometimes when I utter God's name, in fact, I feel like sinking into a void. It isn't a frightening or dizzying sensation, it's nothing at all — and that's far more terrible. But prayer is the only remedy for it, and however many devils scurry around inside me, I shall cling to the rope God has thrown me in Jesus Christ, even if my numb hands can no longer feel it."

"No one has the right to steal our dreams and trespass upon our liberties."

"My main goal after the war was to help rebuild the Social Democratic Party that Hitler had banned and use it to reunite the people of Germany who had forgotten how a democracy worked – through tolerance, compromise and a dedication to individual freedom."

"Even in days of loss and sorrow, beauty remains, and I am ever grateful."

"I could not fight the Nazis in the present, as they had the power to still my voice, so I decided to fight them in the future."

"Every person has the choice between Good and Evil. Choose Good, and stand against those who would choose Evil."

"Thank God for youth; there will always be love."

"Gutenberg, your printing press has been violated by this evil book!"

"We can hold up under everything if only we have the certainty the monster Hitler with his insatiable bloodletting and plundering will have committed soon his last shameful deed."

"The Party uses the lies up to the last moment as a cover-up. Thus it intimidates the political opponents and provides its Party comrades with sedatives. It is so unbelievably simple for the current gang to lie to this German people and to lead these fools around by the nose."

"Adolph Hitler, "the most ingenious field marshal of all time," the all-powerful ruler over the 1,000 Year Reich-- which collapsed after twelve years --- has disappeared from the scene. The NSDAP has come to a complete and inglorious end."

"There is no punishment that would be hard enough to be applied to these Nazi beasts. Of course, in the case of retribution the innocent will have to suffer along with them. Ninety-nine percent of the German people, directly or indirectly, carry the guilt for the present situation. Therefore we can only say this: Those who travel together, hang together."

"If now, after the collapse, any of these lackeys of Adolf Hitler has the insolence to want to be considered as a harmless onlooker, then one can only wish he immediately feels the scourge of avenging mankind. . . . Whoever cries about having lost the totalitarian system or wants to resurrect National Socialism is to be treated as an incorrigible lunatic."

"Better days and better people make bad days and bad people bearable."

"Under the category, "Air Force aided by Hitler youth," the children wear military uniforms and become used to handling the artillery. Fifteen- and sixteen-year-old children as warriors! If the war still continues to last for a long time, perhaps infants also will be used. Total war!"

"The carnage will eventually come to an end, but the Western powers will carry the historical guilt for not promptly providing the most intensive preventative measures against Germany's incessant politics of aggression. Possibilities existed, but no actions were taken."

"Why only hate? Where does love remain? Or at least a little decency toward other people? We think we can behave against everyone in the exact same rabid way we did against the Jews: to smash, crush--and even exterminate."

"Spineless politics do not change the mind of a tyrant. The sharpest means would still be too mild."

"If the Jews, who over the centuries contributed demonstrable achievements in the economy for the total development of the nation, can be made a people without rights, then that is an act unworthy of a cultured nation. The curse of this evil deed will indelibly rest on the entire German people. The authors, the National Socialists, will have disappeared some day; their deeds, however, will live on"

"Hitler knew weapons alone would not be decisive, he focused on molding the people’s spirit, breeding something singular in history: bravado, blind obedience, ruthlessness, and brutality. There was contempt for every noble human emotion; contemptible disregard for the thinking of others; destruction of religion and religious establishments -- and there was the extermination of the Jews because they were wiser than the German people."

"This "Conqueror of Berlin," as he [Joseph Goebbels] has named himself, has completely conquered Germany. And not only that: many Germans living abroad--all too many of them, unfortunately--have fallen for the cunning propaganda."

"To trample democracy with one’s feet and give power to a single man over almost eighty million people is so terrible one can really tremble over the things that will come."

"Terror is trump. Methods of common brutal suppression are considered sanctified laws. "Old Fighters" are saints, and from the district leader upwards there are only Gods!"

"The world will rightfully be outraged over so much inhumanity, and it will ignite a hatred that can never be extinguished. . . . How long will this reign of terror continue?"

"Nothing more confounds your enemies than when you suddenly and silently recall a better moment and smile."

"When dictators enslave their own people and seek to impose their anti-democratic ideology upon others, when evil seeks power, men and women of good will must set aside their own differences of opinion and stand together and fight – including those who hate war."

"But what really gave credence, to Germans and other Europeans alike, to Adenauer’s Westbindung (attachment to the West), was the extraordinary recovery of the West German economy that started around 1950. The Wirtschaftswunder, the German economic miracle, had many causes. Marshall Plan assistance and the linking of the deutschmark to the US dollar was one. The gradual integration of the West German economy into a western European framework was another. Perhaps most important was the US decision to shield the Federal Republic of Germany from the full effect of wartime debt and postwar reparations. The FRG had to pay some reparations, and the dismantling of some German industries and compensatory takeover of patents and technology continued until the early 1950s. But the cumulative burden of excessive debt never came into play. As a result, West Germany was even freer than some of its new Western partners to plan for further expansion as its economy began to grow. The social transformation the Wirtschaftswunder created was one of the biggest stories of postwar Europe. In 1945 all of Germany was a bombed-out disaster zone. Ten years later most people had jobs that paid well enough for their families both to consume and to save. Industries and infrastructure were approaching prewar levels. Housing was being rebuilt at astonishing rates. West German banks had credit available and the country’s currency and interest rates were stable. The West German economy grew by more than 5 percent year on year during the 1950s and ’60s. It was the highest growth rate of any major European economy, more than twice that of Britain, for instance."

"The biggest Cold War problem inside western Europe was how to handle the German question. From the setting up of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, there had always been a suspicion that West German leaders would give up on Western cohesion in order to strike a deal with the USSR on reunification. The idea was not far-fetched. Mistrust of Germans, any Germans, went together with the knowledge that under Cold War conditions such a deal was the only means through which the Germans could achieve what other Europeans assumed were their most cherished aims. But the assumption of German pliability toward the Soviets foundered on the thinking of the West German Bundeskanzler (premier) Konrad Adenauer. A conservative Christian Democrat from Rhineland in the west of the country, Adenauer wanted reunification, but he wanted his Germany’s integration with the Western powers even more. Adenauer was keenly aware of how enticing the siren song of reunification, even under Communist conditions, could be to some of his countrymen. He therefore at all times prioritized cooperation with the French and with the Americans. “For us, there is no doubt that we belong to the western European world through heritage and temperament,” he had said already in his first declaration as German premier. And Adenauer became a constant in West German politics, remaining chancellor until 1963, when he was eighty-seven years old."

"On behalf of the American people I congratulate you for your historic contribution not only to the affairs of your own country but to those of the European community as a whole. Through your dedication and inspiring leadership, the Federal Republic has risen out of the chaos of war to a position of influence and responsibility in the community of free nations. Moreover, there has been developed in Germany a government guided by the principles of democracy and motivated by a sincere desire to play a positive role in the great movement toward European cooperation and integration. Your effective work in developing understanding between our two peoples has also been a contribution of major significance."

"I am deeply grateful for your kind message from Milwaukee and I reciprocate most cordially your expression of good wishes. It was indeed a pleasure for me to have a chance to talk with you during your stay in Washington. I share your viewpoint regarding the community of interests and ideas which exists between our respective Governments and peoples, and I know that your visit here has contributed materially to the further strengthening of the bonds of friendship between our two countries. Mrs. Eisenhower joins me in sending you warm regards."

"On each of the six leaders profiled in this book, these upheavals left an indelible mark. The political career of Konrad Adenauer (born 1876), who served as mayor of Cologne from 1917 to 1933, would include the interwar conflict with France over the Rhineland as well as the rise of Hitler; during the Second World War, he was twice imprisoned by the Nazis. Beginning in 1949, Adenauer shepherded Germany past the lowest point of its history by abandoning its decades-long quest for domination of Europe, anchoring Germany in the Atlantic Alliance, and rebuilding it on a moral foundation which reflected his own Christian values and democratic convictions."