Sophie Scholl—The Final Days (Germany 2005)
Plot summary: Based on real people and actual events, Sophie Scholl—The Final Days tells the story of Sophie and Hans Scholl, brother and sister, and students at the University of Munich in the 1942-1943 academic year. They and some likeminded student friends of theirs, among them Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, and Willi Graf, organize a resistance group to the Nazi regime, which they name the White Rose. Working in secret, the members of the White Rose compose, type, and mechanically duplicate leaflets urging the German people to oppose their government and work together to overthrow it. They also write anti-Nazi grafitti on buildings in Munich during the dead of night. The White Rose members then mail their leaflets to thousands of people throughout Germany. Names of addressees were selected from telephone directories, and members of the White Rose travelled with stacks of addressed and stamped letters to various German cities, from which they mailed the letters. (In this way they hoped to create the impression that their movement was widespread throughout Germany, instead of being headquartered in Munich: when an item was mailed the postage stamp would be cancelled and overwritten with the place where and the date when the item was mailed.) On the morning of February 18, 1943 Hans and Sophie Scholl are caught leaving stacks of anti-Nazi leaflets in the Munich University while classes are in session. They are arrested and interrograted by the Gestapo, the Nazi state secret police (from Geheimstaatspolizei: Geheim=secret; Staat=state; and Polizei=police). At first they deny that they had any involvement in creating the leaflets, later they confess and are tried in court by the notorious Nazi judge, Roland Freisler on February 22nd. They are pronounced guilty of high treason and executed by guillotine at 5:00 p.m. that same day. Sophie Scholl was twenty-one and her brother Hans twenty-four. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Explanatory notes to the film by chapter (see main menu for listing of chapters): Chapter 5, “Introducing Inspector Mohr”: Gestapo inspector Robert Mohr asks Sophie if she was present at a revolt that students of the University of Munich staged during a speech given by a Nazi official in January 1943. The official, called a Gauleiter (district leader), had said to the women students, “Young women should bear a child for the Führer [the Leader, Adolf Hitler’s official title] instead of hanging around the University.” Mohr says the Gauleiter “even promised to give the less pretty girls to one of his adjutants.” This is an example 1
of the National Socialist (Nazi) belief that German women’s primary duty was to bear children—even outside of marriage (a shocking idea in the 1940s)—to increase the numbers of the German people. The spontaneous revolt that the students staged after these remarks gave members of the White Rose hope that the students would respond favorably to their leaflets and work to overthrow the Nazi regime. Chapter 6, “Child Behind Bars”: Sophie is led to a cell in the basement of the Munich Gestapo headquarters. A female guard asks her to remove her jewelry, wristwatch, and clothing. While Sophie is doing this, we hear a speech playing on the radio in the background. We hear the speaker say: . . . to defend our lives by any means. Without consideration for the . . . Total war is the demand of the hour! We must put an end to the bourgeois attitude which we have also seen in this war. The danger facing us is enormous. The time has come to remove the gloves and use our fists. Those who today do not understand . . . will thank us tomorrow on bent knees for taking on the task. Later, when the male guard puts Sophie and her cellmate in their cell, he says, “Enter, ladies! Hurry up, I want to hear the speech!” The speech you are hearing playing in the background during this scene is an actual recording of a speech that Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister for Propaganda and Political Enlightenment, delivered on February 18, 1943 before a live, hand-picked audience of Nazi faithful in Berlin, the very day that Hans and Sophie Scholl were arrested in Munich and delivered into the hands of the Gestapo. Goebbels’s speech came a few weeks after the German army suffered a decisive military defeat at Stalingrad in Russia. Approximately 300,000 German soldiers perished in the vain attempt to capture this city. The loss of this battle marked a real turning point in the war against Germany. The Nazi government had no choice but to announce the stunning military defeat to its people on February 2, 1943—too many soldiers had died to cover it up. Goebbels intended his speech to rally the German people to a renewed, all-out struggle against the countries fighting against Germany: England, the United States, and Russia. In his speech, he asks his audience, “Do you want war?” His listeners rise to their feet shouting, “YES!” Goebbels then asks, “Do you want it—if need be—more total and more radical than anything we could even imagine today?” Again, his crowd rises to their feet, raises their arms in the Hitler salute, and yells, “YES!” Click on the link to view a recording of a part of this famous and chilling speech calling for a war without any limits against Germany’s enemies and at any cost to Germany: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVP3KU-qOzc
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Chapter 7, “Runs in the Family”: Gestapo inspector Robert Mohr asks Sophie if she is unmarried. She replies that she is engaged to Fritz Hartnagel, who is serving in the German army on the Eastern front. Inspector Mohr asks, “Stalingrad?”—a reference to the recent, epic battle that Germany had lost a few weeks before. Sophie replies, “Yes.” Fritz Hartnagel would survive the war and go on to marry Sophie’s sister, Elisabeth. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Instructions for answering the essay question for this film Step 1: Watch Sophie Scholl—The Final Days on side one of the DVD. Refer to the explanatory notes on the previous page to better understand the content of the film. Step 2: On side two of the DVD, select the item, “Behind-the-Scenes: the Production” from the main menu. Then select the fifth item on the “Behind-theScenes: the Production” menu, “City Hall.” This “City Hall” item will show you, among other things, the Munich city hall, including the chamber that was used in the film for the court room where Hans and Sophie Scholl’s trial took place, an interview with the mayor of Munich, Christian Ude, and an interview with an anonymous elderly man who reflects on the Nazi regime that he lived under when he was a boy. Watch this interview with particular attention. Speaking about that time, the man says, You weren’t allowed to speak. I was a child, but I too realized that you could only say things in a whisper. It was too late. People were concerned with themselves, and about the war and the bombs that had been dropped. . . . And people had lost all their energy to even think about the fate of others. Then, referring to the members of the White Rose, he says, “As a German, I am grateful that such people existed. I am really happy that . . . .” At this point his voice breaks and he begins to cry. Why? Step 3: Answer the two questions that follow below in essay format, that is using complete paragraphs. Aim to write at least one page, 12 point type, with normal page margins. You may turn your essay into me in person or send it to me as an attachment in Microsoft Word. I will accept essays until Saturday, June 14, this is to give you additional time and not to take time away from studying for your final on June 11 (1:00 p.m. class) or June 12 (10:30 a.m. class). This extra credit essay will be worth up to 28 points, the equivalent of one quiz (but not equivalent to the midterm). 3
The resistance of Sophie and Hans Scholl and other members of the White Rose was a rare exception during the Third Reich. Why did not more people in Germany stand up and oppose the Nazi regime, its all out war against the other nations of Europe, and its murder of “life unworthy of life”: the hereditarily and mentally ill, the Roma, gays, and Jews? How does a totalitarian state like Nazi Germany work to prevent people from opposing it?
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